Six years ago few people believed that informal learning made much of a difference. Today’s common wisdom is that most workplace learning is experiential, unplanned, social, and informal.

Informal learning tops many training department agendas. Companies are attracted by the low price tag. However, few of them are doing much systematically. They’ve converted a few programs but they’ve failed to improve their learning ecosystems.

We’ve shifted how we think about learning since the Informal Learning book came out. It’s a new ball game and we need to play by new rules. Consider what’s changed:

• We used to think that communities of practice could only sprout up organically. Now we know we create them via artificial insemination.
• The information explosion has hit. We create as much new information in a day as we once created in a millennium, and it’s growing exponentially. People trying to figure everything out all out by themselves are whizzing their way to overload and breakdown; collective wisdom and social filters are the only way to keep up.
• Companies are connecting people with social network technology. Some have so embraced in-house social networking, microblogging, and discussion forums that they define themselves as “social businesses.” The merged workflow/learning that flow through these networks makes or breaks the enterprise’s sustainability.
• Time continues to go faster. New businesses are created in a week and are acquired in less than a year. Competitors are faster on their feet.
• Complexity theory used to be a riddle for scientists to tinker with. Today we all grapple with complexity’s outpouring of unpredictability, volatility, emergence, and uncertainty.
• The tools for building and sustaining networks are at hand and are dirt cheap.
• We used to think that knowledge resided in people heads. Today most of us believe the knowledge resides in networks.
• Web 2.0 has become mainstream. People communicate with texts, Tweets, iPhones, email, and blogs in their personal lives, and expect to be able to do so at work.
• People have become savvy web consumers. Young people who grew up with Facebook, MySpace, Wikipedia, and Google are entering the workforce. New hires ask “Where’s the network? Where do I post my profile?”
• Internet Culture is proliferating. Openness and sharing are default behaviors.
• The web gives unprecedented free access to college courses, how-to videos, advice columns, and experts.
• Network access has gone mobile. Desktop PCs have given way to laptops and laptops are losing ground to smartphones and tablets.
• Connectivity has undoubtedly shifted the 80%/20% ratio of informal to formal learning; it’s probably closer to 95%/5% these days.

I’m convinced that working smarter by boosting informal performance is a key to survival in today’s topsy-turvy business climate. I’ve resolved to show organizations how to increase the effectiveness and depth of informal learning — in the larger context of working smarter in the digital enterprise. Working Smarter is not education for intellectual enrichment; it is how people get better at doing their jobs over time.

When the book on informal learning came out, nay-sayers attacked me as some kind of loony. Some still do. I’ve got a thick skin.

QUESTION: How do you know that informal learning works?
ANSWER: How did you learn to walk and talk? How did you learn to kiss?

QUESTION: How can you measure what people learn?
ANSWER: By judging what they do. Has their performance improved?

QUESTION: How can we assess the ROI of informal learning?
ANSWER: Cost-benefit analysis. But hold it, how to you assess the ROI of formal learning?

QUESTION: How do you know learning on the job is 80% informal?
ANSWER: Study after study arrives at that figure but it’s a generality. It depends on the context: what’s to be learned, who’s learning it, and where’s the learner starting from. The important thing is that informal learning is too important to overlook.

QUESTION: Do you want a doctor or pilot who learned informally?
ANSWER: Informal learning is only part of the solution.  I want my doctors and pilots to have learned both formally and through experience. Yes, I want them to engage in frequent conversation with their peers.

QUESTION: How do you know if people really learn this way?
ANSWER: You ask them how they learned to do what they’re doing. Studies find that only 15% of what’s learning in formal workshops shows up as changed behavior on the job. Can informal learning do any worse?

Despite the criticism, many readers were very supportive. I expected managers and executives to flock to informal learning. Corporations leave money on the table — lots of it — by not investing in the combination of working and learning that really works.

What happened? Not much. Companies continued to put almost all of the training budget into schooling novices. They acted as if the natural way of informal learning didn’t exist. Or was someone else’s responsibility. They largely squandered the opportunity to increase their effectiveness by becoming networked learning organizations. I think I’ve figured out why.

Schooling

Business people confuse learning with schooling.

For the better part of twenty years, school indoctrinated us that formal learning was the legitimate way to learn, that teachers and books provided the knowledge one needed to master, and that grades were the measure of accomplishment.

It’s easy to poke fun at the foibles of schooling. Learning is active and most schooling is passive. What’s taught in school is often superficial, boring, and irrelevant. Since school learning isn’t reinforced in real life, most of what’s learned is forgotten before it can be put to use. Could you pass your college’s final exams? Grades that once seemed so important turn out to be meaningless outside of school systems.

Nonetheless, most corporate training departments are modeled on schools. They deal with learners who are enrolled. They provide top-down classes and rigid content. They take attendance, administer tests, and certify participation. They let non-training learning fall between the cracks.

The Road Not Taken

Nick Shackleton-Jones commented on a post on Jane Hart’s blog about this topic:

I replied:

David Price followed up:

Trust is at the heart of this. If you don’t trust people to do what’s right, you can’t support informal learning. We’ll return to this subject.

In the next couple of posts, I’m going to point out how the world has changed since the book came out and things I’d do differently were I writing the book today.

Previously

Informal Learning is Business
Let’s Put Informal Learning to Work

Six years ago I wrote Informal Learning, Rediscovering the Natural Pathways that Inspire Innovation and Performance. The book came out before iPhones and iPads. Facebook was only available to students. Twitter had not been born. eLearning was still haled as a panacea. Andy McAfee had just coined the term Enterprise 2.0, and nobody was talking about Social Business. It’s time for an upgrade.

This is the first in a series of posts about what informal learning is and how to put it into practice.

Synopsis of Informal Learning
The book made the case that most learning about how to do a job is informal. An organization that fails to address informal learning leaves a tremendous amount of learning to chance.

Most corporations spend most of their training budget on formal learning, despite the fact that most of the learning that goes on is informal.

What is learning?
Learning is how people adapt to changing conditions, and things are changing faster than ever before.

Learning is that which enables you to participate successfully in life, at work, and in the groups that matter to you. Informal learning is the unofficial, unscheduled, impromptu way people learn to do their jobs.

Corporations would bypass learning altogether were it not politically incorrect to do so. Executives don’t want learning; they want execution. They want the job done. They want performance.

Formal and informal learning
Learning is neither formal nor informal; it’s always a bit of both.

Learning that is more formal has a curriculum: content and objectives that are set by someone other than the learner. Often people learn formally in groups at set times. It’s like riding a bus. The bus follows the official route regardless of the requests of individual passengers. Formal learning frequently concludes with some sort of recognition, be it a certificate or grade or checkmark in a learning management system. People participate in formal learning because they are told to.

Informal learning is more personalized. The learner chooses the subject matter and often decides how and when to learn it. Learning may be solo or with others. It’s like riding a bicycle. The bike rider selects the route, often changing in mid-course. The rider may stop short of the original destination. People generally learn informally to get something done, and it’s the ability to do something that demonstrates that learning took place.

Listening to a lecture or attending a workshop are primarily formal learning. Asking questions of co-workers or trial-and-error are informal.

This is the first post of many. You can find more information about informal learning here.

Six years ago, Pfeiffer published Informal Learning, Rediscovering the Natural Pathways that Inspire Innovation and Performance. The book advanced the then-controversial thesis that people mostly learn their jobs experientially. Workers learn more in the coffee room than in the classroom.

They do not move
I thought I had made a sound business case for investing more in informal learning, but few organizations changed their ways. They continued to put almost all of the training budget into schooling novices. They acted as if the natural way of informal learning didn’t exist. Or was someone else’s responsibility. They squandered the opportunity to increase their effectiveness by becoming networked learning organizations.

More smoke than fire
Today informal learning tops many training department agendas. They’re attracted by the low price tag. However, few of them are doing much systematically. They give lip-service to doing more with less but run a few experiments rather than embracing the philosophy. Times are tough, and they are leaving money on the table. This is crazy-making. I’m convinced that working smarter by boosting informal performance is a key to survival in today’s topsy-turvy business climate.

Showing organizations what to do
I’ve resolved to turn the situation around by showing organizations what to do — how to increase the effectiveness and depth of informal learning — in the larger context of working smarter in the digital enterprise. Working Smarter is not education for intellectual enrichment; it is how people get better at doing their jobs over time.

Research
The first phase is research, identifying what works best, gathering good examples and stories, building learning communities, creating model, drawing the graphics, shooting the video, and communicating the recommended approaches. This is ongoing.

Sponsorship
Vendors who sponsor the research will gain insight into how to design products and services to support working smarter, thereby improving client profitability. Vendors also get bragging rights, insight into customer needs, and guidance on sustainable product development. Sponsors may host webinars, conference presentations, Major sponsors gain access to the Internet Time Alliance brain trust as well.

Status
This is a live project. I’m currently getting my arms around it, reviewing changes over the past half dozen years, and pondering where we’ll be headed in the next two or three.

Help me unearth practical examples and stories of organizations that are taking advantage of informal learning. Among the questions I’m looking for answer to…

• How can an organization accelerate the transition from push learning to pull?
• What skills and attitudes empower an informal learner do well?
• What are the most lucrative ways organizations are taking advantage of informal learning?
• What’s the payback for working smarter?

I’ll keep you posted. Get in touch or leave a comment if you’d like to participate.

WORKERS LEARN MORE in the coffee room than in the classroom. They discover how to do their jobs through informal learning: talking, observing others, trial-and-error, and simply working with people in the know. Formal learning—classes and workshops—is the source of only 10 to 20 percent of what people learn at work. Corporations overinvest in formal training programs while neglecting natural, simpler informal processes.

OUT OF TIME
More happens in a minute today than in one of your great grandmother’s hours. Not only is more and more activity packed into every minute, the rate of change itself is increasing. Measured by achievements, the twenty-first century will contain not a hundred years twentieth-century years, but twenty thousand of them. Change itself is accelerating. People are anxious. The future is unpredictable. Companies are run by sound bites. People plan; God laughs. The traditional mode of training employees is obsolete.

INFORMAL LEARNING
Learning is that which enables you to participate successfully in life, at work, and in the groups that matter to you. Informal learning is the unofficial, unscheduled, impromptu way people learn to do their jobs. Formal learning is like riding a bus: the driver decides where the bus is going; the passengers are along for the ride. Informal learning is like riding a bike: the rider chooses the destination, the speed, and the route. The rider can take a detour at a moment’s notice to admire the scenery or go to the bathroom. Learning is adaptation. Taking advantage of the double meaning of the word network, to learn is to optimize the quality of one’s networks.

(more…)

Welcome to my new home on the web. If you want to keep up with my blogs, thoughts, learnstream, and so forth, please subscribe below. Internet Time Blog will echo here, so this is where to subscribe to see everything I’m working on.

If you can’t find what you’re looking for or have a suggestion, please leave a comment below.

This is also my working site; I stash things here I may want to recall, both funky and formal.

The site’s also a museum. I began blogging in the last century, back when most bloggers knew one another. The stream indexes thousands of posts that document the early days of eLearning, the sweep of informal learning, and the genesis of the working smarter meme.

Don’t miss the goodies

Download a free book.	Zoom the Informal Learning Poster.
Watch us build the Internet Time Lab.	Seminal articles and video

Look around. The Stream is a river of posts from the Internet Time Blog, Unmanagement.org, the old Informal Learning Blog, and my learnsteams. The Core is 16 categories of Jay: books, reference, and Just Jay. That last one includes The Berkeley Diet and Unmanagement.

Thanks for dropping by.

I started this blog when Informal Learning was released, November 10, 2006.

The informal learning meme has gone mainstream. I am gratified. That crusade is behind me.

Informal learning is more important than ever. It’s part of life. It no longer needs an in-your-face site to promote it.

These days I focus my energies on helping organizations work smarter. Informal learning is part of the mix, but so are social business, brain science, systems thinking, and a bunch of other things.

Join me at Internet Time Blog. That’s where I’ve blogged for more than a decade and where I engage new thoughts and interactions.

You want Jay, that’s where I’ll be. Even I was getting confused about which blog to post in.

The archives will live on. The Internet Time Search box will continue to cover both blogs.

Subscribe to Internet Time blog here (Feedburner RSS).

A New Culture of Learning by John Seely Brown and Doug Thomas

This short book (136 pages) is inspiring. I just read it a second time, something I very rarely do. These paragraphs lept out and grabbed me:

Peer-to-Peer Learning
In the new culture of learning, people learn through their interaction and participation with one another in fluid relationships that are the result of shared interests and opportunity. In this environment, the participants all stand on equal ground—no one is assigned to the traditional role of teacher or student. Instead, anyone who has particular knowledge of, or experience with, a given subject may take on the role of mentor at any time. Mentors provide a sense of structure to guide learning, which they may do by listening empathically and by reinforcing intrinsic motivation to help the student discover a voice, a calling, or a passion. Once a particular passion or interest is unleashed, constant interaction among group members, with their varying skills and talents, functions as a kind of peer amplifier, providing numerous outlets, resources, and aids to further an individual’s learning.

Learning from others is neither new nor revolutionary; it has just been ignored by most of our educational institutions. The college experience is a perfect example. When students set foot on campus in their freshman year, they begin a learning experience that is governed only in part by their classroom interactions. Assuming they live on campus, sleep eight hours a night, and attend classes three hours a day, students are immersed in a learning environment for an additional thirteen hours a day. Simply by being among the people around them—in study groups, for instance—students are learning from their environment, participating in an experience rich in resources of deep encounters.

The Emergence of the Collective
Our ability to produce, consume, and distribute knowledge in an unlimited, unfiltered, and immediate way is the primary reason for the changes we see today. One no longer needs to own a television station, a printing press, or a broadcast transmitter to disseminate information, for example. With just a computer and access to the internet, one can view or consume an almost unimaginably diverse array of information and points of view.

But equally important is the ability to add one’s own knowledge to the general mix. That contribution may be large, such as a new website, or it may be a series of smaller offerings, such as comments on a blog or a forum post. It may even be something as trivial as simply visiting a website. But in each case, the participation has an effect, both in terms of what the individual is able to draw from it and how it shapes and augments the stream of information.

This core aspect of education in the new culture of learning presents a model for understanding learning in the face of rapid change. Teachers no longer need to scramble to provide the latest up-to-date information to students because the students themselves are taking an active role in helping to create and mold it, particularly in areas of social information.

We call this environment a collective. As the name implies, it is a collection of people, skills, and talent that produces a result greater than the sum of its parts.10 For our purposes, collectives are not solely defined by shared intention, action, or purpose (though those elements may exist and often do). Rather, they are defined by an active engagement with the process of learning.

Workscapes
Here’s an important aspect of that I call a workscape:

Students learn best when they are able to follow their passion and operate within the constraints of a bounded environment. Both of those elements matter. Without the boundary set by the assignment of playing the prelude, there would be no medium for growth. But without the passion, there would be nothing to grow in the medium. Yet the process of discovering one’s passion can be complicated.

Training Smarter, Working Smarter

Wednesday, February 16, 2011 at 11 AM PST/ 2 PM EST

FREE

Considering the fast pace and super-connectedness of today’s business environment, is the old static classroom really the best place for achieving modern training objectives?

Hear Jay Cross, a leading expert on informal learning, for a far-ranging conversation about how organizations are working – and training – smarter in the network era.

Find out how smart businesses today are reaping the benefits of continuous, peer-to-peer learning and collaboration.

I prefer conversations to presentations. Bring your questions. After the introduction, I’ll be happy to let you hi-jack the session to talk about what’s on your mind.

Attend this webinar to learn how:

• Work and learning are converging.
• Informal learning often costs less and delivers more than formal class time.
• An elevator pitch will help you overcome management objections.
• Social learning can help you reach training goals faster.

Register

Three people will win copies of the new Working Smarter Fieldbook.

When I first attended TechKnowledge six or seven years ago, the content was all stuff I’d heard before. I grumbled. Lance Dublin set me straight. This conference wasn’t for me; it was for newbies. They hadn’t heard the Bob Pikes and Bill Byhams (and the Lances) give their stump speeches before, and they were enthralled to hear them. The first time you heard these guys, they knocked your socks off. (The fifth time, you admired their stamina.)

This taught me to segment conferences by the audiences they appealed to. Some event are bleeding edge confabs for learning professionals at the top of their game; others are designed for newcomers. While it bored me to tears, my first TechKnowledge was a great experience for most of those in attendance.

Conferences aren’t good or bad; it’s whether they are designed for you or for a different group of people.

ASTD held TechKnowledge in San Jose this year. Committee chairperson Ellen Wagner demanded they pick a spot with wi-fi. (TechKnowledge’s habitual hangout was the Riviera Hotel in Vegas. Casinos don’t have decent wifi for the same reason they don’t have clocks on the wall; it might divert gamblers from throwing their money away.) Needless to say, the “capital of Silicon Valley” has a different take on providing wifi. The event has morphed. It’s not just for newbs any more, although the event is conflicted about ditching training for learning: for taking taking the game into the 21st century where pull replaces push.

Over the course of three days, I attended all of two sessions. One was precisely what I was looking for. It was, as the Michelin Guide would say, “worth the journey.” Dan Pontefract and David Mallon’s presentation on creating a culture of collaboration at TELUS was one of the most useful things I’ve ever heard at an ASTD event, and I was making presentations at ASTD events thirty years ago.

I also attended the keynote by a couple of Googlers. Google provides a lot of the infrastructure social learning rides on; they own Blogger, YouTube, GoogleDocs, GoogleAnalytics, and so forth. I mentioned to Tony Bingham, sitting next to me, that Google lacked the problem most corporations face: cultural drag. You want to do something with social learning in most corporations, you better have a switchblade in your pocket, for you’ll find enemies in every corner. Entrenched managers and staff will have nightmares about what might go wrong and give you a thumbs down. What if somebody spills company secrets? Or leaks private information? Or posts something that’s not accurate? How can we trust these people? (We’re paid to control them, aren’t we?)

Google doesn’t have those problems. It’s open. It’s transparent. They worship innovation above all. They like crazies. They trust their employees to do what’s best — with minimal oversight. So the presentation was very interesting but couldn’t describe the greatest challenge for most L&D professionals, bringing the corporate culture into the 21st century. Turns out one to the Googlers lives right down the hill for me; we’re going to continue the conversation at a tapas bar tomorrow night.

But only two sessions over the course of three days? Did I recoup my investment of time, not to mention the price of a fancy suite atop the Fairmont? Yes, yes, yes.

It fit where I’m at in the lifecycle of conference attendance.

When I was a newcomer, I attended conferences to build my foundation knowledge. I attended ASTD, eLearning, Online Learning, Elliott Masie’s TechLearn, Training, ISPI (then NSPI), and many others. I went to as many sessions as I could pack into the day, taking voluminous notes (even before computers went personal. Remember ballpoint pens?) This is where structured learning shines: give me your framework. I’ll use it until I develop my own.

As time passed, I became choosy. I sought out speakers who had new ideas to offer, perspectives I was not familiar with, or great delivery and entertainment value. Instead of trying to cover it all, I was a man with a mission. I became a “pull” learner, pursuing what I wanted aggressively and bypassing the rest. I checked the backgrounds of the speakers and decided in advance who I’d like to hob-not with. (Were I doing it again, I’d try to contact those I wanted to meet before the event.)

In the early 2000s, Elliott Masie’s TechLearn (he came up with the name; ASTD’s TechKnowledge shamelessly ripped it off) was a fertile field for networking and sampling new concepts. Everyone who has known Elliott for a while has mixed feelings. Elliott brought together exciting ideas, great people, and a prophetic vision. His annual get-togethers at DisneyWorld were great for networking and meeting up with others. Maybe they still are. Elliott’s ego may suck all of the air out of the room, but when people needed someone to lead them out of the woods, he has illuminated the path.

My relationship with Elliott is like my relationship with Tom Cruise. I never hear from him and don’t expect to. We live on different planets. But it was at TechLearn that I learned how to learn outside of the main tent, and I’m grateful.

Back to San Jose. I spent half the time working my tail off from my room at the Fairmont. First things first. Client priorities trump attending conferences.

While I attended only two sessions, meetings with friends old and new more than made up for it. These reunions and check-ins were fantastic. Quick reconnections refresh forgotten but important memories from times past. Sometimes our rapid-fire 140-character conversions conveyed what was important and conveyed the right links for making progress.

(Click the image for the photos)

Chats with Allison, Lance, David, Pat, Tony, Nancy, Ellen, Jos, Vivian, Alicia, Aaron, Martyn, Dan, Reuben, Chris, another David, Koreen, Karie, Charles, Michelle, Karl, a third David, Bob, Scott, Sam, Jennifer, Ryann, Michael, and oodles of other kindred spirits — that list is off the top — lit up my panels, flooded my consciousness with fresh ideas, and taught me more than anything I could have learned in a workshop. Thanks, gang.

If you know the analogy, I’m entirely off the bus, having more fun and learning more because of it. People have called me a “guru.” Right. Un-huh. As if. I only have few clues. Now I’m involuntarily becoming a wise elder instead of a smartalec. I’m wryly enjoying a growing appreciation of the flow of time. The deeper you go, the better it gets.